Marine, 19, dies after combat injury in Iraq

A 19-year-old Marine from Virginia Beach died last week, more than two weeks after he was injured during combat near Fallujah, Iraq.

Lance Cpl. Kelly E.C. Watters was already decorated with two Purple Hearts and on his second tour in Iraq when he was injured May 23. He was airlifted to Bethesda Naval Hospital via Germany, and his parents visited him there.

"They were at his bedside when he passed," said Maj. Cliff W. Gilmore, a spokesman for the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Lance Cpl. Watters joined the Marine Corps in November 2005, and Gilmore said he graduated from boot camp at Parris Island, S.C. Lance Cpl. Watters spent an eight-month stint in Iraq in 2007 between January and August and was redeployed in April with the 2nd Marine Division of the II Marine Expeditionary Force.

He was injured in al-Anbar province in southern Iraq, and Gilmore could not confirm any details of what happened.

But on May 24, the Los Angles Times reported that six Marines were injured after a firefight when a roadside bomb hit their patrol northwest of Fallujah. An Iraqi interpreter was also killed during the attack.

Fallujah has been a major flash point for urban combat during the war in Iraq since 2004, when U.S. forces and insurgents fought a protracted street-to-street battle there. Violence had been quelled in the city and surrounding areas in the past year after military numbers were boosted and local Sunni tribesmen were brought in to fight outside extremists.

The province has been hit by a string of bombings and attacks in the past few months.

Since the military invasion in 2004, the United States has suffered 4,098 deaths, according to the independent Web site icasualties.org, which tracks injury and casualty statistics on a monthly and yearly basis.

Calls to the family home in Virginia Beach were not returned, but an unidentified person who answered said the funeral for Lance Cpl. Watters would take place Thursday.